pharosIQ: welcome to this week's episode of pharosIQ’s Podcast, the podcast for B2B marketers that is anything but boring.
pharosIQ: pharosIQ is the demand generation lead for financial services for Google Cloud. a new tech and a little bit different spin on marketing and B2B marketing demand gen. Tejal, thank you for coming. How are you?
Tejal: I'm good. How are you? Thank you for having me!
pharosIQ: So you specialize in what some would call industry or some vertical demand generation and marketing, which is a little bit different animal than just, your general, other types of demand generation goals. So let's jump in, tell me, what do you think the key differences are between marketing to a broad audience.
Versus a specific industry or vertical.
Tejal: Yeah, I think a broad audience is more a wider appeal with demographics, general interests, the messaging focuses on a lot of universal benefits, problem solving, and creating the emotional connection across the board. And you have more, I think, accessibility in terms of what kind of channels you can use.
You can throw it out on perhaps TV, radio, social platforms. Whereas I think vertical marketing is so specialized or I should say laser focused on specific job roles or different types of industries like what I do in financial services. And you, you need to speak to that sort of.
Fire within that industry speak their language, there's more specific trade publications, industry events, niche, social groups, and digital advertising, right? So there's kinds of nuances that you can really tap into. So it's very specific in just different types of industry.
Like you have automotive, manufacturing, retail. And as I mentioned, the one I focused on over the years is financial services. And an example of the broader sense of marketing could be like a a company that does clothing for children and men's and women's that's more of a broader marketing pitch, like a target comp corporation has a lot of different types of buyers, so there's a bit of a difference in terms of horizontal, and I think it's from top of the funnel a little bit more wider in terms of, your reach. That you have.
pharosIQ: So it's harder and easier at the same time. Yes. Because you have you're, obviously you can't, I think that the hardest part is the, is finding that ICP, right?
Because you know who it is. So you don't have to like search through this big haystack, exactly where you're looking, but there's only so many places to reach them, right? There's only so many industry mags. Industry podcast, industry verticals. So you're while it's a bit easier because someone tells you this is exactly who you should target, right?
Trying to cost effectively find those people is always a challenging. I feel this is like a chicken or an egg scenario, right? Does the company decide that they want to be vertically specific first, right? Or they decide that they want, that they start out broad and they eventually get to the point where they want to do vertical specifics.
How does that usually work with your experience?
Tejal: That's a really good question. In my experience, you start out more horizontally first, really build that air cover, and then figure out where the niche is, right? Where your revenue could come from, where that demand is, and then you can build out the industries there.
I think the challenge with industry marketing is also how much are you willing to put behind it, right? In terms of a company, do you want to put resources like people? budgets I think if you want to do industry marketing without some of those elements, it can be really hard, to crack that nut in terms of different industries.
So then you're just focusing on more horizontal type of marketing.
pharosIQ: How do you choose which industries to focus on? Is it industry driven? Is it data driven? Is it like, do you look at your trigger trailing 12 close ones and be like, Hey are We sold like 20 percent of our deals were healthcare.
Maybe we should focus there. Or is it more front end data driven versus reaction?
Tejal: Yeah, I think it's For me would be data driven. Where is the business at? Where is the interest? Where is the opportunity? Some of it you can always look at what like your competitors are doing and get a good eye for where that could potentially take you in your journey.
But I would say, facts are your friends and the data really should be a good starting point. Where, for what industries you actually focus on. And I find that financial services is a really good one. Technology is a nice industry depending on what you're selling, right? So where I work at Google Cloud financial services is a good focus.
And that's where I came in from with my background at Dow Jones, where I did that for many years. And it was a nice little segue into. What I do today.
pharosIQ: So tell me a little bit about some of the nuances, right? How do you tailor your marketing messages and value prop for those specific industries?
Cause you have to, still adhere to the brand, and then now you prop up the business as a whole, but you have to speak to a very specific group. How does that work usually?
Tejal: Yeah. So for me, as any marketer, you need to really understand who your personas are, start with the personas and then build that storyline based on that, study like where they go with, what are their watering holes, where they, go to get their information.
Are there trade magazines, publications, events that they go to, do they go to smaller events, groups? How do they think and how do they buy and make their purchasing decisions? And then build that story, right? So you're storytelling what their pain points are really understand their challenges build that narrative on that and how Your product can really solve their problem And fill that void or their gap that they're you know feeling within their company within their team and the marketplace and Build it like as if you're, you know connecting them with a story I tend to like themes i'm drawn by themes like what's hot in the marketplace right now Ai is like the big topic, right?
So how can you bring that into your storytelling and build that narrative for them? What makes you stand out and differentiate yourself in a crowded market? And I think that how you tell that story really helps to, gain more attention, more buyers and how you can, I think the ultimate thing is like, how can you transform or help them to evolve their own, Business or what their remit is or what they're trying to sell in the marketplace.
I try to focus on what those benefits are, make it more emotional. So I've worked on campaigns that are really fun, very interesting, something that people can like quickly look at and understand what we're trying to, accomplish or help them with. And, visuals are really important.
Testimonials are important. I think I lean heavily on, having the, if you can get customers to speak on your behalf. telling them, telling the audience, like what we've done for others that really shows what your expertise is and how you get things done and how you accomplish your, the goals of your customers.
Demos are another thing, where you can really understand, okay, what's this person looking for and visualize that aspect of how you can, Take your product and blend it into their everyday lives and help them, Service their customer better
pharosIQ: You mentioned fun and financial services now.
I know my cfo pretty closely I don't connect the two very often. Is it? Is it possible to have a fun campaign talking to the financial services segment?
Tejal: yeah, when I say fun, I feel like I like I always say I always love to watch my Campaigns come to life right and that's usually for me through the creative.
What does that look like? and I'll give you an example of campaign we ran for when I was at Dow Jones, right? Like we built this whole campaign start to finish for the wealth manager product. So that meant building out that go to market, right? Building out that ecosystem of who we're targeting.
They were wealth managers. And then you just have, I think for me, I have to make it fun. And so part of what I did was, we were able to tap into the wall street journal and the editor. So I got Robert Frank, who's like the wealth editor there, or he was there at the time. And, I had him come on a webinar that I started and then I had somebody else join who was an influencer in the industry and he catered to wealth managers.
So I built that ecosystem out and I did, a free autograph book for the first, a hundred people that signed up for the webinar and, like telling that story in terms of it through other people's eyes and lenses is always fun. And I don't know that's how I, my definition of fun could be creative.
Oh,
pharosIQ: very cool. I think it's, and you jumped ahead. You already gave us a great idea for a creative campaign. So I don't have to ask the question at the end now, but we'll dive in more there. But I think it's really like building trust, right? Like doing things that. Let that buyer know that Hey, I know who you are.
Like I know who you listen to. I know what you read. I know what books you want autographed and we sell, I've worked with a lot of it, obviously you work with a lot of very it focused marketers at Google cloud as well, too. And sometimes it's just as simple as like reaching out to that it person and saying Hey, I understand.
Like I remember I've seen a lot of campaigns where help desk heroes like along that vein, because, a lot of times those folks are usually the unappreciated hero of the group who just, fixes the computers and all anybody, everybody does is complain that my laptop is broken or that.
So it's really that trust back to there. So what, what are some of the challenges that, That you face or that others may face jumping into kind of vertical or industry marketing.
Tejal: Yeah, I think some of the challenges are, you can put a great campaign together, but then you feel like, is anybody listening?
Are people skeptical? You have competitors that are always, sometimes, three steps ahead of you and you're trying to shine out from the crowd and that I think is really challenging, so I always say Really get to know people and I think you know as a marketer. I try to build relationships, right?
So what do those relationships look like? Okay, you know I can say Pick five different event organizations, build the relationships with them, see if you can, pitch the experts within your company, which is another aspect of where I say, it's fun for me to network with the experts within, my organization as well as outside to get to know people who create these events, right?
Place my speakers there to build that credibility. And I think that that's where you could, overcome some of those challenges. But I think the hardest one is, where you try to stand out with your products and services and why people should buy from you and consider your product, without yeah, without being the underdog,
pharosIQ: yeah, that's the tighter the market, the tighter the market, the more tight, tightly wound the competition is, yeah, and it's hard to, it's, it's hard to like, not, people always say, oh, don't pay attention to the competition, but it's just hard, especially if somebody's trending in a direction or doing something cool and okay, I have to pay attention to that just becomes, there's a challenge that rolls with that.
Tejal: Yeah, that's a job in its own in of itself. Like when you're trying to focus on What you're trying to do for your own company, but then your competitors are trying to do the same thing you know what kind of makes you stand out and I always say Building out the themes if you build out a really good theme that stands out from the crowd The rest will come pretty easily, then you're like again going back to that storytelling aspect of you know Bringing it all together.
How does this work? What's this challenge, and I think then once you get that done, it's easier to drive leads. We I find that's super helpful.
pharosIQ: So let's dive into the unboringness, right? You mentioned a little bit earlier, your wealth management campaigns and tell us a little bit more about, that campaign, why did you like it?
Give us a little bit more detail on it beyond the top level and. Did it work? Would you do it again? Would you recommend it to a colleague? All that good stuff. Let's hear it. Let's dive into the trenches.
Tejal: I will tell you, I would definitely do it again a thousand times. It was great to build out the go to market strategy for that campaign.
It was brand new and it was something that was very, interesting for me to work on, because it gave me the like I was the master of my own destiny with launching that product, externally to all these wealth managers and then coming up with that storyline and finding out where these people are, and fleshing them out and saying, Hey, listen to our great product, we can help you communicate with your clients better.
I had, like different ABM sort of stories that we did, with little round tables with different customers where we knew that there was opportunity. Building that out from the aspect of advertising, and we were able to do some really great advertising placements.
Through the journal because, Dow Jones is tied to it. We had ads that we placed in different publications, social media, to bring that storyline together and then tie it in with PR. It becomes really exciting. Another example I have is a campaign called the clarivate top 100 global innovators campaign.
When I got that campaign handed to me, it was pretty stale. It was going on, a bunch of years, but it didn't have any life to it. So like my exciting part of it was to resuscitate it and how can I make it look really good. And so I had a small budget, so we actually did. Really amazing cover for it and blended everything into the entire online version of that report.
We had really great experts that I could tap into. So I worked with them to help write all the different stories. We did the whole integrated campaign. We involved the PR team. We reached out to our customers like an embargo and we said, Hey, can we get your seat CEO to make to write, cover letter for it and an opening remarks and things like that.
And then we said, okay, what are the metrics right for that campaign? And we wrote out all the metrics, everything we wanted to accomplish. We had all the comms plans. We had a nurture stream planned for it, a microsite where people can go to and really search and say, okay, is my company on there?
Which automotive companies are on there that are doing a lot more innovation. You can tell the whole point of the report was you can tell who's innovating and who's a laggard just by looking at the amount of patents that they had filed for, right? So the data. Tells you everything the data in itself tells you a story and that's where the storyline comes from is if you look hard enough you can play that out And over the years that report is still going on and it's going strong and every time I see it And and it pops up on linkedin.
I'm, so proud of that. Our customers really valued that and they were We actually had to write comms and an FAQ for the sales team to take back to customers that didn't make the report that didn't make the top 100. So you're looking at that from an angle of Hey, why didn't my company make that?
Maybe we're not innovating enough. Maybe we're not, doing X, Y, Z. So it's it was It was very interesting from that respect too, was that customers really valued that outcome of the report and we had to give them a heads up and say, Hey, you didn't make this report this year.
You didn't make the top 100 and it's going to be released tomorrow, but we want to make sure that you're, you understand why. And so we had to get, it was like all hands on deck when we launched that report. Yeah. How long ago was that? The Top 100 Global Innovators report? That's still going on.
pharosIQ: you were working on it? I
Tejal: believe that was 2018, 2019. I think the report, yeah the I first started working on that 2019. Yeah.
pharosIQ: You were ahead of, you were a bit ahead of the times there, before the, for the top one hundreds and all of that became like all the rage.
Now I feel like LinkedIn has like a new top 100 every six it's basically now it's you're the top 100 people I'd like to sell, like that's what it's become, but it's it's interesting to hear just from a, an early adopter of that type of program.
No matter what people love to win stuff or at least be acknowledged for something. There's never going to be a buyer who's going to be like, nah, I won't take this award that you're giving me, even though I know it might be fluffy or it might be something, a marketing campaign.
People are always going to be like, okay, I'll let's chat, some of the ones that I've either you follow a year after year over year. And it sounds like for that industry, that was one of them too. You have a good one where people are mad.
They're not on it.
Tejal: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That they really, that they don't take it lightly that it's very meaningful, especially if you're in the IP space. It's yeah it definitely tells a lot about what you do. And it was such a great campaign that it was a finalist for the marquee award for the global international campaign.
So that in and of itself made me really more proud of the work that we did. And, we had a great team that kind of came around to the table to make it all happen. So Yeah,
pharosIQ: Killer idea. I've always dug awards, recognitions, and I think we're seeing a lot of interesting ways people are putting new spins on them as well, too.
So I think there's a lot of innovation to happen on that side. So well thank you so much. for joining us today. It's been pretty awesome. And that was either in vertical or industry marketing or thinking they want to attack it here soon.
Learned a ton about some of the nuances, differences, and challenges from that. Plus a couple awesome campaigns a long way. With that, I will thank you for coming. For those of you who were listening hit us up on Spotify. Wherever you listen to your podcast, give us a thumbs up. Give us a five star rate as well.
So other B2B marketers can find us as there. You can find pharosIQ on LinkedIn. You can find us at pharosiq.com. Tajal, where can we find you? LinkedIn?
Tejal: LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn.
pharosIQ: So great. Thank you so much for joining us again until next time. We'll look forward to catching up again soon.
